Of all the things I’ve heard and read about Colorado’s incoming blue-chip running back, Darrell Scott, what made my jaw drop most was a quote from CU wide receiver Josh Smith. Smith insisted that Scott is “at least a half-step faster than me.” Read more…

Redshirting sophomore forward Casey Crawford has looked as good in Colorado men’s basketball practices as he does getting off the bus.

That’s the word on the 6-foot-9, 230-pound transfer from Wake Forest, who figures to be a focal point of CU’s offense in Jeff Bzdelik’s second season.

“Casey is really going to help us next year,’’ Bzdelik has said.

Crawford rarely got off the bench during his freshman season at Wake Forest, logging just 27 minutes of playing time and scoring a total of 10 points. But all that bench time might have been a reflection of a bad fit. Crawford is a versatile forward who can shoot from outside, and the system employed by the late Wake Forest coach Skip Prosser called for more of a traditional power forward. And perhaps Crawford, as a true freshman, wasn’t ready for the rough-and-tumble ACC.

Crawford’s credentials can’t be questioned. He was named 2006 Kansas Gatorade Player of the Year and Kansas Mr. Basketball after averaging 22 points and 10 rebounds as a senior at Blue Valley North High School in Overland Park. He made at least one national top-100 list.

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With company lines being tossed around from all sides, it’s difficult to tell if Purdue football coach Joe Tiller was blindsided. Here’s hoping he wasn’t.

Word leaked out only recently that Eastern Kentucky head coach Danny Hope will be brought on board as an assistant this season, with the promise to be Tiller’s successor in 2009. Hope had been Tiller’s offensive line coach at Purdue from 1997-2001.

Tiller, 65, became one of my all-time favorite coaches when I covered Wyoming football in 1996, Tiller’s last season in Laramie. He’s frank and funny, honest and homespun.

I certainly don’t think Tiller gets enough credit for contributing to the evolution of the spread offense. With all the talk of Urban Meyer, Rich Rodriguez and Mike Leach being innovators, Tiller was running the spread at Wyoming in the early 1990s.

Although he’s a native Ohioan, Tiller is a Westerner at heart. I’d be surprised if he doesn’t retire in the state of Wyoming, perhaps in the Buffalo area which he dearly loves.

It would be good to have him back.

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Trivia question: Xavier Silas (former Spurs guard James Silas) and Cory Higgins (Bobcats general manager Rod Higgins) aren’t the only players on the CU men’s basketball team with fathers who played in the pros at the highest level. Name the third.

Answer below.

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Another indication of the ability of CU football coach Dan Hawkins to spot offensive line talent: Boise State junior left tackle Ryan Clady (6-6, 317) has declared for the 2008 NFL Draft and is projected to be taken in the upper half of the first round.

Another former Hawkins recruit at Boise, Daryn Colledge, is a starter for the Green Bay Packers at left guard. Colledge, from North Pole, Alaska, was taken by the Packers in the second round of the 2006 draft.

“I look for a certain toughness at that position,’’ Hawkins has said of offensive linemen.

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There must be some explanation for this. In terms of boosting his career victory total, Eddie Sutton seems to be benefiting both ways.

When Sutton took a medical leave of absence at Oklahoma State during the 2005-2006 season, Eddie got all the subsequent victories by the Cowboys while his son, Sean, did the coaching.

And when Eddie recently took over at San Francisco (after head coach Jessie Evans requested a leave of absence for the remainder of the season), Sutton mentioned that getting two more victories to reach 800 was “very important.”

I like Eddie, always have. But fair is fair.

Am I missing something here?

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Word is that CU’s Bzdelik became seething mad over delays that likely will push back the completion of locker room renovations to March.

Donated funds for the project have been is in place for some time, but contract red tape and other construction issues are to blame for delays.

The wheels of progress never seem to move quickly enough at CU – or probably at most bureaucracy-strangled universities, for that matter.

Bzdelik had been told in the summer that the locker room would be ready by the start of conference play. That was last week.

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I heard a play-by-play radio announcer refer to the past weekend’s NFL action as the “elite eight.” He had better not call the remaining teams the “final four” because Final Four is copyrighted by the NCAA.

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Bravo to Xavier University for turning down a “mid-major” award from Rivals.com.

Rivals called Xavier officials last week, informing the team that point guard Drew Lavender had been selected for the Internet site’s “Mid-Major Player of the Week” award.

At the time, Xavier was ranked No. 24 by the Associated Press, carried a No. 8 RPI and had already defeated the likes of Indiana, Cincinnati, Kansas State, Virginia and Auburn.

That doesn’t sound like a mid-major program to me.

I’ll never forget Gonzaga coach Mark Few, another who has fought the ‘mid-major’ tag, opening his post-game comments to reporters following a narrow NCAA Tournament win over Xavier in 2006 this way: “Let me first say, that team we just beat is no mid-major. Xavier is as athletically talented as a lot of Pac-10 teams we have played. Don’t call them a mid-major.’’

It’s so easy for fans — and a lot of sports writers and sportscasters I know – to lump together the leagues outside of the BCS Conferences and call them all “mid-majors.”

When a college hoops writer from a large newspaper on the East Coast got into an argument and insisted that to be indeed the case, I told him: “Well then, that means just a few years ago, before the expansion of the Big East Conference, you must have considered Louisville, Cincinnati, DePaul and Marquette to be ‘mid-majors,’ right?’’

His jaw dropped.

Here’s the way I look at it.

BCS is a football term. It has nothing to do with basketball. Basketball-crazy programs such as Memphis, Gonzaga, Utah, New Mexico, UNLV, Xavier, Dayton, Southern Illinois, St. Joseph’s, Creighton, Nevada, Tulsa, Fresno State and others put as much effort — and sometimes as much money — into their men’s basketball program as some schools in BCS conferences. Their tradition might be bigger than some BCS teams, their crowds larger.

At the very least, the Mountain West, Atlantic-10 and Missouri Valley should absolutely not be lumped in with mid-majors. And high-profile programs such as Gonzaga and Memphis show there are exceptions among other conferences.

I don’t like labels. But maybe we need one for schools that aren’t in the “power conferences” (a better term than BCS, when referring to hoops) but are obviously a step up from the mid-major category.

I’m open to suggestions.

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Trivia answer: Casey Crawford’s father, Steve Crawford, pitched 10 seasons in the major leagues before retiring in 1991, including the first seven years for the Boston Red Sox before ending with three years at Kansas City.

He compiled a career record of 30-23, with two complete games, 19 saves and an ERA of 4.15.